The Palm brand might be coming back, courtesy of Alcatel Onetouch

It's been a good long while since we've mentioned Palm around these parts, but there's a strong possibility we could be mentioning them a lot more often if what we think is happening is in fact what is happening. By all appearances, it looks like Alcatel Onetouch has purchased the Palm brand and trademarks from HP. This comes just a few years after HP shut down webOS and eventually open sourced it and sold their development assets to LG. It's hard to say what exactly Alcatel Onetouch might be doing with the Palm trademarks, anything from protecting their own branding to a complete rebrand as Palm is possible.

And then documents were dug up in the United States Trademark and Patent Office that showed that the Palm trademarks had been transferred to a shelf company named Wide Progress Global Limited. They're the only trademarks Wide Progress Global Limited holds, and by sheer coincidence, the VP of that company that signed the transfer agreement also is the President of Americas and Pacific of Alcatel Onetouch and parent company TCL.

It's not conclusive, especially as Alcatel Onetouch has not responded to our requests for comment. Not that we really would expect them to admit to buying a shelf company so they could covertly purchase the Palm brand from HP, at least not until they're ready to admit so.

There's more to this story than needs to be written here, so go ahead and check out webOS Nation for more (there's another name you thought you weren't going to hear again, eh?).